Faculty Early Career Development Program at the NSF (2015)
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation‘s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of both within the context of their organizations’ missions. In 2015, BU hosted two NSF Program Directors, who each provided an overview of the program from the perspective of his directorate:
View Slides (Kerberos log-in required)
Dr. Engin Serpersu:
After receiving BSc in Chemistry in the Middle East Technical University in Ankara Turkey, Dr. Serpersu completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the Medical School of Hacettepe University in Ankara Turkey. He then received Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to start postdoctoral studies at Justus Liebig University in Giessen Germany and continued his studies at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore Maryland USA. He joined to the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville as an Assistant Professor and reached to full Professor rank in the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Tennessee. He is currently a program director at National Science Foundation. His research interests include understanding of structure and function of enzymes. Particularly, understanding of molecular basis of ligand promiscuity shown by many enzymes that modify aminoglycoside antibiotics and render them useless against pathogenic bacteria is studied in his laboratory. He is also interested to discover molecular properties that render enzymes to become thermostable. His studies cover dynamic, thermodynamic and structural aspects of these enzymes using variety of biophysical and computational methods.
Dr. Alexander Leonessa:
Dr. Alexander Leonessa is NSF’s Director for the General and Age Related Disabilities Program, part of the division of chemical, bioengineering, environmental, and transport systems. He is also an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech. A 2011 recipient of an NSF CAREER award, Dr. Leonessa has focused his research on restoring the voice of stroke patients and others who have suffered paralysis of the vocal folds. He is a key faculty member with Virginia Tech’s Center of Dynamic Systems Modeling and Control (DySMAC) as well as the Terrestrial Robotics Engineering and Controls (TREC) Laboratory, whose members are working on the development of several autonomous platforms, including ground vehicles driven by scanning the brain of patients using one of the MRI machines at VTCRI, and several humanoid robots to be used for shipboard firefighting and to enter the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics Challenge. Dr. Leonessa received three degrees from Georgia Tech: a doctorate in aerospace engineering in 1999, a master’s in applied mathematics, also in 1999, and a master’s in aerospace engineering in 1997. He earned his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1993.